Bellingham Comments from Digital Recorder - EISs for the Proposed ...

Point site. It’s a site where the reef nets and anchors are below the water lines. We can no longer fish
our heron up there because of the depletion of the docks and tankers have impacted on our coastline.
We have a registered historical gravesite and village site in the green lines just above the Cherry Point
area where they are proposing to build. They say their not testing, we know their testing. They’ve
dredged and illegally bulldozed a road through the woods, knowing their only going to be imposed on
low environmental fines by the county. We have registered historical sites, we’re worried about the air
that’s going to pollute, and we’re worried about the runoff from the coal particulates. We also have
support of over 257 tribes and a council resolution proposal provided by the National Council of
American Indians that we will be providing to you soon.
My name is Eric Hirst. I live in Bellingham, WA. I hope that you can conduct a comprehensive
Environmental Impact Assessment that looks at the widest possible range of environmental effects,
economic effects, health effects, and social and cultural effects concerning the proposed GPT terminal. I
also hope that the EIS will take its scope to the entire world and not limit itself to just the GPT site or
Whatcom County because the coal is going to be mined in Montana and then shipped from Montana
west through much of Washington state and north along Puget Sound. The coal will then be shipped in
big ships in Whatcom County all the way over to China or other countries in Asia. Because the coal will
be burned in China, the pollution will come back at least in part to the NW United States. Because of
global warming, I hope that the geographic scope, as I say, is very broad.
The question of the coal terminal here is the ability to burn clean coal which is not really possible. My
name is Paul Schroeder, I’m an anthropologist. Blaine, WA. In 2011 TIME magazine looked at the 10
most polluted cities in the world, 2 of those 10 were in China. Number 1 and 2 of the most polluted
were in China. The World Bank reports said 16 of the most polluted cities in the world were in China.
Linith is in China and is classified as the most polluted city in the world. It has 3 million people that it
impacts there. They don’t hang their laundry out there because it turns black before it dries. The
National Parks Service in this country have monitored air pollution that is coming back across the pacific
ocean and have found the mercury concentration in fish in the Olympic National Park to be higher than
8 other western and Alaskan national parks. As a matter of fact, the concentration of mercury in the
Olympic National Park is so high that it cannot be consumed by animals and people. I think the biggest
question here involves the money that we’re up against. The billions of dollars we’re up against in the
industry. The tax base for the coal in Wyoming is $1.2 billion. That $1.2 billion at a rate of 1,000 a day, if
they pay that, it will take more than 3,287 years to pay off that much money. That’s what we’re up
against here in Whatcom County, big, big money.